


rr and c.

by sp201120122013



Series: Dangerverse [9]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 15:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sp201120122013/pseuds/sp201120122013
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>it's a matter of comfort, it's a matter of having another beating heart there to calm down the pace of your own when it starts running out of control.</p><p>(originally posted 2012)</p>
            </blockquote>





	rr and c.

Poison started sleeping with Grace about three weeks after the worst of everything had happened. "Sleeping" with her was an awful way to put it, and brought to mind all of the sickest connotations. It was nothing new in the Zones, to see an unsullied ten year old girl and rip her apart in the most gruesome ways. The ten year old girl part was rare to come by, thinking relatively, but the horrors weren't hard to come by at all.

He'd grown tired of the closet, that's what had happened. Clutching his knees to his chest on his mattress, snuggling close to the wall under layers of tarps, he was warm and sick. He could feel the ghosts of arms on his side, hands around his, a rising chest pressed against his back. When he shut his eyes he could still smell the leftover sex, he could feel the sweat, the sin sliding down his shoulder blades. Not that it was there anymore.

Grace was down the hallway from him. Poison ground his teeth together as he shuffled past his brother's old room, carrying his boots in his hand. Kobra wasn't there anymore. Kobra wasn't hiding behind that door. KK was gone. Grace kept her door unlocked, and Poison pushed it open, sneaking in quietly. He crept to her mattress, the softest they had been able to find, and underneath the makeshift canopy. She was still a little girl. They had all tried to give her the life of a little girl, even if her canopy was made of scraps from a ripped tent and not pink tulle.

Setting his boots down softly on the ground, Poison clambered beside her, lifting up the thick cloth of her sleeping-bag blanket to scoot next to her warm little body. She mumbled in her sleep, and he caught his breath. He didn't want to wake her up. She wouldn't be upset at him for intruding, she wouldn't suspect him of foul play, but he didn't want her to ask any questions. He didn't want her to ask why his cheeks were wet, why he was sniffling and kept bringing his hand up to his face.

She didn't stir, though, just made a few more tiny noises, wiggled a bit. She was a tiny worm. Poison exhaled, shakily, and wrapped an arm around her. He brought her tiny body close to his front, tucking her into him. Grace's fluffy, tangled hair matted itself in front of his face, and he patted the tangled mess down. He left his hand there, pale and naked out of its glove. Her hair was coarse beneath his fingers.

Grace shifted a little beneath him, snuggling into him in her sleep. Poison lay there without moving, making sure she was settled before he dared to release the tension in his shoulders, to melt his body around hers. A whole foot taller than her, he was a good safety net. A good barricade for whatever bad dreams might impede on her sweet resting time. He had his gun tucked into the boots he had brought. Just in case any monsters decided to come out of the closet.

It took Poison a while to fall asleep, that first night. He scratched at the top of her head, a wiry mutt leaving lice under his fingernails. She was a real part of the team, now. She could shoot a gun better than some adults could. A lot of their old favorite adults weren't around anymore. Kobra was gone, Poison thought again. Kobra was gone, he thought as he pulled Grace tighter to his chest. She got a little bit of a bath that night, victim to the precipitated tears that kept sliding off his cheeks and into her hair. He shook behind her for a while, until his crying finally stopped and he rolled into dreams next to her.

\---

Grace always slept late, and it was a good thing. Poison stole himself away before she woke up.

\---

Poison kept going back to her room, though, and couldn't always wake up in time. The runs were getting exhausting, and it was harder and harder to manage with only him and Jet fighting. Kobra always used to pull so much weight, to drive so much force behind his fighting. But Kobra was gone, Poison remembered. For the millionth time, he remembered that Kobra was gone.

So Poison woke up one morning, turned away from Grace and nearly rolled off of the mattress. He would've fallen, too, if not for the small arm wrapped around his waist, the soft hand set on top of his own. He felt another hand gently stroking his hair, and for a second, he swore things were the way they were again. They were still in the closet, and things were as they should be.

But there was no large body pressed against him, no heavy breathing down his neck. Only Grace's fingers combing out the knots in his hair, humming to herself as she did so. Her thumb was moving slowly back and forth across the knuckle of his own, in rhythm with her other movements. He blinked in his sleepiness, mumbling another name before he woke up, before he realized where he was, before he felt the sting of where he wasn't.

"Shh, it's okay. You can go back to sleep."

"Grace? Gracie? Oh, no, I'm so....m'so sorry, I...I..."

"Shh. Go back to sleep."

"I'm..."

"Here. It's okay." she said, squeezing him as tightly as she could, giving him a small kiss on his head. Poison exhaled, shakily, and gave her hand a squeeze back.

"Are you, you sure?" he mumbled, moving his hand to hold hers. He hated being the bigger hand. He missed the bloody knuckles he used to wrap his fingers around.

"I'm sure." Grace said, continuing to pull her fingers through his greasy hair. "You've got such straight hair, PP."

"Yeah."

She was silent for a while, and Poison had almost managed to fall back asleep, lulled by the careful, gentle strokes. But Grace spoke again.

"I miss them too, you know." she said softly.

Her words hit Poison hard, and his face crumpled within seconds. At first he couldn't speak, only capable of shaking in her arms and swallowing heavy gulps of air, exhaling with rattling breaths.

"I miss them so much." he whispered, and all he could do was cry as the tiny girl behind him did her very best to hold him as tight as she could.


End file.
